Neither business groups nor public health advocates are happy about the way the Obama administration is proposing to handle tobacco as part of the massive Pacific Rim trade deal.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman didn’t wait long after arriving in Brunei this week for the 19th round of talks in the Trans-Pacific Partnership to create controversy, making a point of identifying tobacco as a specific example of a public health issue that would be exempted in the 12-country deal.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says the proposal is unnecessary and could throw a wrench into negotiations, while anti-smoking groups complain that issues it leaves unaddressed could spark a new smoking epidemic in developing Southeast Asian countries.

The U.S. plan would — like previous trade deals — make clear that countries can enact regulations that protect their citizens’ health without running afoul of trade rules. The proposal goes a step further, specifying that tobacco regulations would be covered under that exemption.

The proposal also calls for countries’ health authorities to meet if a legal challenge is launched against one participant’s tobacco laws. Only after that summit could challenges go forward through the deal’s still-to-be-defined dispute resolution mechanism.

“This proposal will, for the first time in a trade agreement, address specifically the public health issues surrounding tobacco … while remaining consistent with our trade policy objectives of negotiating a comprehensive agreement that does not create a precedent for excluding agricultural products,” Froman says in a recent statement.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce took aim at the new proposal Friday during a conference call with reporters, arguing that it could undercut the United States’ position that carve-outs for health and human life already included in trade deals provide plenty of room to regulate areas such as tobacco.

“We’re concerned that the proposal could open up Pandora’s box by inviting other countries to bring forth their lists of unique and special products that need special treatment,” said John Murphy, the Chamber’s vice president of international affairs.

He argued that the general exception for health-related measures already covers tobacco and said the Chamber is lobbying hard to get the new proposal dropped before other items such as alcohol are targeted. “The most important thing we can do here is really just to call attention to this matter and how unnecessary the proposal is,” Murphy said.

Sixteen business groups made that same case in a letter Thursday in which they urged the Obama administration to drop its new tobacco proposal.

The new proposal “basically does nothing,” said Chris Bostic, deputy director for policy for Action on Smoking and Health. “It seems to just be throwaway words. It doesn’t seem to have any legal impact.”

Bostic said anti-smoking groups’ concern isn’t state-to-state disputes but lawsuits filed by the tobacco industry against countries that can’t afford to fight back. He said the Obama administration’s proposal does nothing to protect countries, such as Singapore, which is considering banning cigarette sales to anyone born after 2000, and New Zealand, which has set a national goal to eradicate smoking by 2025, from such lawsuits.

Bostic pointed to Uruguay, where the government has said it would have backed down when sued by Philip Morris International had New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg not offered to help cover its legal costs, and New Zealand, which backed off plans to follow Australia’s lead and require cigarettes to be sold in plain packages with dire health warnings.

“Our core concern is the legal chill that’s being created by the tobacco industry by suing governments even when they don’t have a strong legal case,” Bostic said. “Southeast Asia is a hotbed target for the tobacco industry for its marketing, and it’s also got a bunch of governments that are very strong on tobacco control and have some big plans to reduce consumption over the next generation.”